1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to language-based search methods.
2. Review and Limitations of the Prior Art
Today's search engines do not produce search results that are driven, consolidated, and summarized by the major contextual uses of a search input phrase. As a result, search results can be a disorganized jumble of different contextual uses of the search input phrase. This forces a user to wade through pages of results (manually scanning titles, text snippets, and URLS) in order to pick out those entries that relate to the context for the phrase in which the user is interested. For example, if one enters the phrase “keep running” in the search box of today's dominant search engine, then one gets a page of results with a jumble of entries that bounce around from health and fitness . . . to musical songs . . . to computer programs . . . and even to nuclear power plants. There is no organization or summary of results by phrase context to guide the user. Entries with the desired context are randomly-sprinkled throughout several pages of results. This makes poor use of the user's time.
The designers of today's search engines are no doubt aware of this problem of context-jumbled searches. This is probably why they have developed features such as an interactive search box that provides a user with a pop-up menu of auto-completion search phrase options, in real time, as the user enters characters into the search box. This interactive search box is probably intended to help clarify the desired context for the input phrase in an effort to reduce the problem of context-jumbled searches. However, an interactive search box does not satisfactorily address the fundamental flaw of search engines that are not driven by search phrase context. For example, a search box that offers auto-completion options for words to the right of the characters that have been entered does not provide holistic variation of the entire input phrase. For example, it does not offer variation in word order or any other phrase variation that changes the characters that have already been entered. An interactive search box with a pop-up window is not a satisfactory means through which to refine search context and to provide holistic variation of the search input phrase. It is limited in terms of user time, screen space, and character entry order effects.
The prior art includes several different methods for creating variation in search queries, including not only interactive search boxes, but also automatic creation of variation in search queries. Examples in the prior art with methods for creating variation in search queries include the following: U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,065 (Turtle, 1993), U.S. Pat. No. 5,418,948 (Turtle, 1995), U.S. Pat. No. 5,675,819 (Schuetze, 1997), U.S. Pat. No. 5,933,822 (Braden-Harder et al., 1999), U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,940 (Liddy et al., 1999), U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,388 (Liddy et al., 2000), U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,576 (McIntosh, 2001), U.S. Pat. No. 6,321,224 (Beall et al., 2001), U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,590 (Chidlovskii et al., 2001), U.S. Pat. No. 6,510,406 (Marchisio, 2003), U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,585 (Kohli, 2003), U.S. Pat. No. 6,751,611 (Krupin et al., 2004), U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,320 (Wang et al., 2004), U.S. Pat. No. 7,051,023 (Kapur et al., 2006), U.S. Pat. No. 7,231,343 (Treadgold et al., 2007), U.S. Pat. No. 7,231,379 (Parikh et al., 2007), U.S. Pat. No. 7,260,567 (Parikh et al., 2007), U.S. Pat. No. 7,287,025 (Wen et al., 2007), U.S. Pat. No. 7,346,490 (Fass et al., 2008), U.S. Pat. No. 7,370,056 (Parikh et al., 2008), U.S. Pat. No. 7,398,201 (Marchisio et al., 2008), U.S. Pat. No. 7,428,529 (Zeng et al., 2008), U.S. Pat. No. 7,440,941 (Borkovsky et al., 2008), U.S. Pat. No. 7,475,063 (Datta et al., 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,536,408 (Patterson, 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,562,069 (Chowdhury et al., 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,580,921 (Patterson, 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,580,929 (Patterson, 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,584,175 (Patterson, 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,599,914 (Patterson, 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,599,930 (Burns et al., 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,630,978 (Li et al., 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,630,980 (Parikh, 2009), U.S. Pat. No. 7,634,462 (Weyand et al., 2009), and U.S. Pat. No. 7,636,714 (Lamping et al., 2009), and U.S. Patent Application Nos. 20060206474 (Kapur et al., 2006), 20070106937 (Cucerzan et al., 2007), 20080091670 (Ismalon, 2008), 20080114721 (Jones et al., 2008), 20080215564 (Bratseth, 2008), 20080319962 (Riezler et al., 2008), 20090083028 (Davtchev et al., 2009), 20090193008 (De et al., 2009), 20090216737 (Dexter, 2009), 20090259647 (Curtis, 2009), and 20090327269 (Paparizos et al., 2009).
However, none of the prior art provides a context-driven search method whose results are driven, grouped, and summarized according to the major contextual uses of the search input phrase. Such a context-driven method would correct the context-related problems noted above, so that users would no longer have to wade through pages of results to pick out those entries for the context in which they are interested. The invention disclosed herein is a context-driven search method that directly addresses and solves these context-related problems with search methods in the prior art.